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Home Page > Articles in English > Yasser Arafat
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Rampant Corruption, and No Paper Trail
Between January 2003 and June 2004 alone, the European Union (EU) wired 112 million Euro [$136 million] to the PA without proper controls. Since 1993, the EU and its member states have contributed more than 4 billion Euro [$4.8 billion] directly and indirectly to the PA. As early as 1997, a Palestinian internal audit revealed that $359 million, out of a budget of $880 million, had disappeared. And, according to the German public broadcaster ARD, in September 2001, Arafat wired $5.1 million — a sum that may have included international aid money — to his personal account in the Arab Bank in Cairo. Arafat's former treasurer, Jaweed al-Ghussein, related in August 2004 to London's conservative The Times, how, during his 12 years as chairman of the Palestine National Fund, the financial arm of the PLO, he gave Arafat a monthly check for $10.25 million. He was told the money was being spent on the Palestinian movement's paramilitaries and on families who had lost the breadwinner or other members in the struggle. Al-Ghusseim said that there was never any audit on that money: "Ali Baba had 40 thieves — Arafat has 400." "The PA received about $5 billion from donor countries that have gone down the drain," contended Dahlan in an interview with London's The Guardian (Aug. 2, 2004), "and until now, we do not know to where." And in the words of former Prime Minister Abu Mazen, "There are too many fat cats living off the cream of the milk." On August 31, 2004, the European Funding for Peace Coalition that represents European citizens concerned that the EU is continuing to fund Palestinian terrorism, released a new study, "Managing European Taxpayers' Money: Supporting the Palestinian Arabs — A Study in Transparency," which is based primarily on Palestinian and Arab sources and documents. The study reveals "a compelling connection between European funding and ongoing Palestinian corruption and terrorism." And the World Bank recently stated, "...donor disbursements to the Palestinians are one of the highest per capita rates in the history of foreign assistance." Yet despite the massive assistance, most Palestinians live in poverty. On
December 9, 2004, Fatah chairman Farouk Kadoumi revealed at a meeting in Amman
that Muhammad Rashid, Arafat's former financial adviser, has returned $600 million
to the PA and is expected to transfer additional sums, reported the Lebanese daily
Al-Mustaqbal. Israel's Burning Arafat Question The Israelis had enough of Arafat, and hinted in late 2003 that they were considering actions to "remove" him, without going into detail. According to a Yediot Aharonot poll conducted in September 2003, 37 percent of Israelis wanted to see Arafat killed, 23 percent wanted to expel him, 21 percent wanted to continue to isolate him, and 15 percent wanted to see him released and negotiations to continue. "The world will not help us," charged the Jerusalem Post in a fiery September 2003 editorial. "We must help ourselves. And we must kill Yasser Arafat, because the world leaves us no alternative." "The Arafat question has become a domestic political issue [in Israel]," wrote Ze'ev Schiff in Ha'aretz (Sept. 17, 2003). "If there is any chance at all [for a Palestinian prime minister to function properly], it will happen when Arafat is far away. But there is a consensus among the [Israeli] security forces that removing or killing Arafat would broaden the bloody clashes, which could spread to Israeli Arabs." But is Israel — evidently lacking policies for the post-Arafat era — ready to take bold steps without Arafat that it did not take in the past? "When Arafat dies," said Dr. Shmuel Bar of the Institute for Policy and Strategy at the Interdisciplinary Center of Herzliya, "the PLO will die with him. Then we can take our pick of Balkanization, Lebanonization, or Afghanistanization." Ha'aretz' Schiff added another angle to this bleak scenario, having come to the conclusion that Sharon actually needs Arafat, since Sharon's unilateralist course requires the presence of an ostracized Palestinian partner, rather than one able to strike a deal. Oh, the irony: Arafat and Sharon, both shunned by the world, as brothers in arms. "The PA's Days Are Numbered" In June 2004, with the short-lived resignation of Abu Ala (who, according to a Palestinian joke, didn't go to the bathroom without prior authorization from Arafat), numerous kidnappings at gunpoint, states of emergency, mass demonstrations and acts of vandalism, and after Arafat sacked a corrupt old-guard police official and appointed his own cousin, Moussa Arafat, as head of General Security, anarchy reigned in Gaza. Armed gangs of militants ruled the streets of some towns. On July 27, 2004, Arafat embraced and kissed Abu ALA and rejoiced at his return to the government. Unity had returned. Then, Arafat promised more reforms, granted limited powers to his new-old prime minister, smiled broadly, shook hands. He even gave a much anticipated public speech on August 18, 2004, a mea culpa of sorts, performed with a fury of hallmark Arafatesque repetitions and the usual bathos, in which he acknowledged that "unacceptable mistakes were made." But he fell short of taking some of the blame himself and ignored the issue of corruption. He assigned Abu ALA to oversee the internal security forces. But he did not give up his authority over the bulk of his Palestinian security personnel, the Palestinian intelligence service and the armed forces. He promised to place the three security services under the control of the government and to separate judicial and executive functions. But he chose not to issue a binding presidential decree. Regardless of all these presumed initiatives, a former cabinet minister, Abdel Jawad Saleh, was quoted in the Jerusalem Post (Aug. 18, 2004) that there would be a nonviolent "uprising against this authority very soon." In
late August 2004, signs of increasing loss of control were already appearing in
the West Bank. But the Ra'is was still unwilling to cede his absolute power.
"The PA's days are numbered," predicted Ha'aretz' Danny Rubinstein
in September 2003: "The road map is dying, there is no peace process and
they, the zealots of Islam, together with Arafat and remnants of the left, are
entrenched in the positions of the joint struggle." But neither Abu Mazen nor Abu ALA— known in Israel affectionately as "The Abus" — have the grassroots support to ultimately take the reins of the PA. The Arab Press Lashes Out For the first time, Arafat was isolated within the Arab world that always regarded the man with suspicion even though his cause fit well into their political agenda and suited their political ambitions to the letter. Suddenly, the gloves came off. The London-based pan-Arab Al-Hayat coined the phrase "the Somaliazation of Gaza" (July 21, 2004). Arab-language commentators have criticized the Ra'is harshly, and, for the first time, the Arab-language media have openly demanded his resignation. "For the past 56 years, the Palestinians have been led from one disaster to another across the Middle East," fulminated Beirut's independent English-language The Daily Star in its July 23, 2004, editorial. "With such a history, there appears to be a definite lack of consciousness on these leaders' behalf. All the toil and the blood that has been spilled will have come to naught if the PA lets the political situation hemorrhage even further. The PA has to sort itself from the inside out...or [it] will hang by its own noose." Dr. Ibrahim Hamami, a Palestinian writer living in London, was much more blunt: Arafat's "disastrous" policies have led the Palestinians from one catastrophe to another. "You treat the Palestinians as a pair of shoes to be worn or kicked aside as the mood strikes. The solution is for you to pack your bags, take your crooked friends and go somewhere else. Just go. Get out of here!" "Arafat…lives like a leader with no rival [and] employs day-to-day tactics without strategy," writes Ahmad al-Rab'i in the London-based Arab-language daily Al-Sharq al-Awsat (July 16, 2004). "Great leaders act in the interest of their people. Arafat is a leader under siege with no powers. No one can negotiate with him, and if there are negotiations with him, it is done for the benefit of the media only." His colleague, Mamiun Fendi, snapped in the same paper (July 19, 2004) that in all negotiations conducted by Arafat, "it appeared that he was acting according to the saying 'If I'm not part of the solution, I'll ruin the whole game'. All Arabs...must tell this man, 'this matter is bigger than you are,' and the Palestinian people are much more important than [you]. Arafat's actions are not liberation strategy but survival maneuvers, and [as far as he is concerned], the Palestinian people, and the region, can go to hell." Ramzy Baroud added in the U.S.-based Palestine Chronicle (July 30, 2004), "Those who vowed to safeguard the Palestinian people's aspirations were the ones who so harshly desecrated them." "Arafat, like Saddam, has led his people to terrorism, destruction and death," opined Ahmad Jarallah, the editor of Kuwaiti's pro-government daily Al-Seyassah (July 20, 2004). "He has torn the land apart.... This man abuses the lives of his people in order to survive." Columnist Fahd al-Fanek warned in Jordan's pro-government Al-Ra'i that same day: "[Arafat] has become a heavy burden.... What is necessary now is to sacrifice a Palestinian state for the sake of preserving [Arafat's headquarters] in Ramallah.... Does [he] realize that his time is past and that he must retire willingly — or that things will reach their natural end in other ways?" A Communal Form of Martyrdom After all was said and done, nothing much changed, except that the Europeans concluded that Arafat was the main obstacle to peace and were weighing economic levers to induce the Palestinians to let Arafat go. But this was too little too late. "Return of the Joker," mocked Yediot Aharonot in a June 4, 2004, headline. "Arafat is as relevant as ever." Arafat was the one who could make life miserable for Palestinians and Israelis. At Israel's request, Egypt negotiated with Arafat over structural and political changes within the PA in exchange for much needed assistance to the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip once Israel pulls out. The deal would have given Egypt a say in containing Hamas (which is, after all, a threat to Egypt's secular state that sits just over its border with Gaza). The really bad news, according to Ehud Ya'ari writing in the English-language The Jerusalem Report magazine (Aug. 23, 2004), was "that there [was] no automatic correlation between the demand for reform and moderation toward Israel. The opposite [was] the case.... It is not the victory of the reformists that matters as much as the nature of the reform. The point [was] not so much the weakening of Arafat per se, but rather who [would] be strengthened by the distribution of the scraps from his table." "All that Arafat seems capable of offering Palestinians now is a communal form of martyrdom he seems to covet," wrote the New York Times in an unusually acid editorial on July 22, 2004, under the headline The Arafat Problem (Israeli commentators wondered, however, why it took the Times so long to take a firm stance against Arafat). "But there is, of course, no sign that Arafat is interested in much beyond his own myth," the Times continued. "It seems to be of no importance to him that the Palestinian lands are in total ruin and that the fruits of the Oslo accords are in tatters.... The dire situation calls for Arafat's immediate retirement." Arafat, cornered like an animal, waited, until he slipped into a coma. He was waiting for Sharon's political downfall, for a change of guard in the White House, for a messy Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. Arafat knew that he had to gain time in order not to come across as weak and to be forced to make concessions. According to a Palestinian Legislative Council investigation in August, Arafat made a clear political decision not to end lawlessness. "The main reason for the failure of the Palestinian security forces and their lack of action in restoring order is the total lack of a clear political decision without a definition of their roles, either for the long term or the short," the report states. On August 25, 2004, the Ra'is refused to sign the presidential decrees needed for restructuring his administration. Arafat knew he had to wait. "He apparently feels he must still hold some cards close to his chest for that last, fateful hand that he plainly believes he alone will yet play, one day, with Ariel Sharon or another Israeli leader," muses Ha'aretz (July 7, 2004). The paper called Arafat "the wily, seasoned chairman [and] not a man for loose language. Much fog remains." Alas, the fog never lifted. One image will stay long after he is gone: an old man mumbling to himself, blowing kisses in the air, a "joker," as Yediot called him, pacing the few rooms he had left in his house of cards — his very own museum of ruins. He
knowingly sacrificed a brighter future for his own people, while clinging to imaginary
martyrdom. 1 2
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After
Arafat's death, the ensuing vacuum would hurt the Palestinian cause irreparably.
Who would be able to find where the Ra'is diverted the $1 billion of revenue
from the budget that was given to the PA in aid money between 1995 and 2000? No
one. 
